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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Prasarana: Concession card queues due to overwhelming response

More counters made available for students, senior citizens and the disabled to change their stored value cards, as Prasarana targets July 15 deadline.

KUALA LUMPUR: The migration from the current MyRapid Concession Card to the new MyRapid Touch ‘n Go (TnG) platform has received overwhelming response from the public, resulting in long waits at the selected offices and stations where it can be done.

According to Prasarana Malaysia Bhd president Azmi Abdul Aziz, thousands of users are using the long holiday weekend to change their current MyRapid Concession Card, which is only meant for students, senior citizens and the disabled.

“We apologise for the inconvenience. There has been an overwhelming response from the public causing the waiting time for the migration process to be longer,” Azmi said at a press conference today.

Azmi said the process per MyRapid Concession cardholder took longer due to security vetting and verification of identity, which led to the crowd growing faster than the rate of card conversion.

“Because of security vetting as well as the overwhelming response from the public, the waiting time has become longer than it should be.

“However, from today we are working on reducing the waiting time,” he said, adding that Prasarana has added two extra counters for MyRapid Concession cardholders at the Pasar Seni Bus Hub.

“Apart from the Pasar Seni Bus Hub, we have also now enabled MyRapid Concession cards to be changed at the Subang LRT station (Kelana Jaya line) and the Awan Besar LRT station (Sri Petaling line) as well.”

Prasarana is in the midst of migrating its stored value card, MyRapid, to accommodate integration in the ticketing systems between the LRT and MRT lines, in view of the launch of the MRT Sungei Buloh-Kajang (MRT-SBK) second phase next month.

While for regular MyRapid cardholders the MyRapid card migration is a simple process that can be done at any of Rapid KL’s LRT, bus, monorail and BRT stations, the migration for the MyRapid Concession Card is more time-consuming as it needs users to provide their photo, MyKad and other information for verification purposes.

It was previously reported that with only one location to change the MyRapid Concession card – Pasar Seni Bus Hub – those affected had to endure a long waiting time, more so with the limited number of counters allocated for students, senior citizens and the disabled.

According to Prasarana, there are more than 60,000 MyRapid Concession cardholders.

Prasarana group communications and strategic marketing head Lim Jin Aun said the objective of the migration was to allow all Rapid KL customers to travel on one stored value card on the existing LRT, bus, BRT and monorail networks, as well as on the MRT Sungai Buloh-Kajang (SBK) line.

“That is why all existing cardholders have been given until July 15 to change their cards to the new MyRapid TnG card,” Lim said, referring to the July 17 launch of the full MRT-SBK network.

He added that the card also allows users to switch seamlessly from existing LRT services to the MRT network and vice versa at certain interchanges (Pasar Seni, Maluri, and Merdeka-Plaza Rakyat) without the need to tap in and out. -FMT